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Home School Life Journal

"Let us strive to make each moment beautiful."

Saint Francis DeSales

painting by Katie Bergenholtz

Mayans and Toltecs (500-1500) and Base 20 Math

The Maya people lived in small kingdoms in the rainforests and plains of Central America. Their temples were pyramids and they played a fast-moving ball game. They had a very accurate 365 day calendar.

Around 1160 fierce tribes began invading, scattering both the Toltecs and the Mayas.
Around 850m most of the Maya had moved north into the area known as the Yucatan. Meanwhile, in Mexico the Toltecs became powerful. In the 1100's invadig tribes drove the Toltecs out of Mexican and into the Yucatan, where it seems as if they worked together peacefully.

Remember the fun we had with base 6 math? The Mayan's math system was a base 20 system.

So, I got out the counters and we decided to have some fun with Mayan Math.

First we made up a name for the numbers from 10- 20, because it was easier to understand the place value if we used differnt names for the digits that we have in our base 10 that would not also be in base 20. So, our ten became bleep...11 became cheep...12 became seep and so on to 20.